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For years, if you liked a tweet you could click a little star icon to "favorite" it. But Twitter has decided that this concept is too confusing, so it's rebranding it as a "like" button (that sounds familiar) and replacing the star with a heart:
You can say a lot with a heart. Introducing a new way to show how you feel on Twitter: https://t.co/WKBEmORXNW pic.twitter.com/G4ZGe0rDTP
— Twitter (@twitter) November 3, 2015
This is part of a larger campaign by Twitter to expand the appeal of its social network. Twitter is extremely popular among journalists and the tech elite, but it has fallen far behind Facebook among ordinary users. Twitter has about 320 million users, compared with 1.5 billion Facebook users. That's upsetting to Wall Street, which wants to see Twitter earn Facebook-like profits instead of the losses it's been suffering quarter after quarter.
Twitter has been trying a variety of things to make itself more accessible, including a "moments" tab that displays curated collections of tweets about news stories and a "while you were away" feature that shows occasional users the most interesting tweets that appeared since they last logged in.
Unsurprisingly, lots of people on Twitter had opinions, and made jokes, about the change:
Pretty happy everyone else on Twitter is talking about the star wars as well
— David Zhou (@dz) November 3, 2015
I've learned 3 things from Twitter: 1) People hate change. 2) People accept change. 3) We'll all be dead in 100 years and no one will care.
— Matt Novak (@paleofuture) November 3, 2015
Personally, I think we should have the option of using *all* of the Lucky Charms.
— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) November 3, 2015
ironically, twitter didn’t use its OWN NEW FEATURE — polls — to learn that no one wants hearts
— Chris Ziegler (@zpower) November 3, 2015
Retweets to be renamed pokes
— James Cook (@JamesLiamCook) November 3, 2015
what's ❤️ got 2 do, got 2 do w/ it what's ❤️ but a 2️⃣✋emotion what's ❤️ got 2 do, got 2 do w/it who needs a ❤️ when a ⭐️ can't be broken⁉️
— SarahNicolePrickett (@snpsnpsnp) November 3, 2015
This is your daily reminder that there are other things happening in the world, and people who don't use Twitter exist!
— Lauren Katz (@Laur_Katz) November 3, 2015
.@Twitter we’re glad you had a change of heart. We like you even more!
— American Heart Assoc (@American_Heart) November 3, 2015
